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parts and connections. It’s very easy to patch<br />
MIDI note number to the centre frequency of an<br />
EQ. But this is a simple one-dimensional example,<br />
and the power of Kyma starts to become obvious<br />
once you realise that processes can modulate<br />
each other. A more powerful example would<br />
be frequency dependent ducking, using a<br />
combination of level analysis and filtering to<br />
hollow out an EQ notch around a vocal part<br />
following the vocal’s level. Of course you’re not<br />
limited to a single sidechain unless you want<br />
to be. And Kyma is entirely com<strong>for</strong>table with<br />
surround with arbitrary channel counts, so it’s<br />
easy to mix surround channels to create a single<br />
control signal and apply that to as many discrete<br />
channels as you want. A more creative possibility<br />
would be auto-switching between different<br />
voiced/vowel and unvoiced/consonsant FX<br />
chains in a line of dialogue. But it’s also possible<br />
to do clever spectrum-wide manipulations like<br />
ducking or otherwise mutating the entire spectral<br />
curve of a voice rather than just a single EQ notch.<br />
A Kyma adept would be able to take them even<br />
further, recognising individual words from<br />
dialogue or even reassembling speech or vocals<br />
in a completely open-ended way. It doesn’t<br />
take long to appreciate that the possibilities are<br />
almost limitless.<br />
Getting Tricky With It<br />
Many users will stop there, and either skip<br />
the next stage or dabble briefly with its basics.<br />
But each element in Kyma can be scripted<br />
using either the underlying Smalltalk computer<br />
language, or the slightly simplified CapyTalk<br />
variant. Scripting is popular in 3D animation – CGI<br />
would be impossible without it – but the firewall<br />
between audio users and software programmers<br />
has been much more strictly en<strong>for</strong>ced in audio.<br />
At least, that’s the tradition – but it’s not quite<br />
as true as it used to be. Some laptop users discover<br />
tools like Supercollider and Csound – both are<br />
computer programs that generate and process<br />
sound. Other users have taken to writing their own<br />
plug-ins, and found that it isn’t as hard as it looks.<br />
Kyma’s environment takes this kind of scripting a<br />
stage further, with a fairly painless introduction<br />
that can be extended almost indefinitely.<br />
It’s possible, and useful, to modify the action<br />
of most of the features with single-line scripts<br />
which don’t do anything spectacularly clever,<br />
but are easy to adapt and customise. From there<br />
it’s a relatively easy step to move towards more<br />
complex scripting. Scripting isn’t as intuitive as<br />
patching boxes together and dialling up presets,<br />
but it offers almost supernatural control over<br />
audio. You can build yourself a third-octave<br />
graphic with only a few lines of text, and sweep<br />
the centre frequency of all the bands in parallel,<br />
randomly varying the frequency of each band<br />
above 1K – this can create an unusual chorus<br />
effect – or randomly varying the level.<br />
A notorious audio marketing cliché of the<br />
1980s promised audio products limited only<br />
by your imagination. Twenty years later, Kyma<br />
comes closer than any other product to making<br />
good on that promise. The catch is that most<br />
audio engineering and sound design happen<br />
inside a small creative space, and Kyma blows<br />
that space wide open. There’s a shock factor<br />
involved in realising how unadventurous most<br />
of your experience with audio has been, and a<br />
challenging acclimatisation process as you get<br />
used to thinking outside of the usual boxes.<br />
With Kyma, processes and effects can be made<br />
smart and responsive – almost anything becomes<br />
possible, including FX that include their own<br />
automation, and can listen to audio and respond<br />
to it intelligently.<br />
Conclusion<br />
If you’re looking <strong>for</strong> a quick-fix audio sweetener<br />
box, Kyma probably won’t be <strong>for</strong> you. It doesn’t<br />
promise the fattest, creamiest compression you’ve<br />
ever heard, or the world’s most expensively silky<br />
pre-amps. But the applications <strong>for</strong> post are more<br />
obvious. Surgical sound editing becomes trivially<br />
simple, and the possibilities <strong>for</strong> creative sound<br />
design are almost endless. Kyma specialises in<br />
exactly the kinds of sounds that designers live to<br />
work on – exotic, strange, unusual, and creative.<br />
The morphing possibilities on their own are worth<br />
the asking price. Although Kyma isn’t cheap<br />
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symbolic sound kyma pacarana<br />
compared to software-only products, it needs<br />
to be assessed at its own level, which pegs it at<br />
roughly equivalent to a box and a half of good pro<br />
outboard. At that price it’s something of a bargain<br />
– but only if you’re prepared to stretch your sound<br />
design work in new directions that aren’t possible<br />
with any other product. �<br />
...................................<br />
INFORMATION<br />
� Pacarana Professional US$4,402.00 (exc.tax)<br />
Pacarana Entry-Level US$2,970.00 (exc.tax)<br />
All systems include Kyma X software and free<br />
updates<br />
� Symbolic Sound, PO Box 2549, Champaign, IL<br />
61825-2549, USA<br />
� +1 217 355 6273<br />
� www.symbolicsound.com<br />
� info-kyma@symbolicsound.com<br />
DPA 5100 JP <strong>Audio</strong><strong>Media</strong>.indd 1 04/05/09 08.29<br />
AUDIO MEDIA MAY <strong>2009</strong> 47